Poured Out for the Forgiveness of Sins

Homily for the Solemnity of Pentecost

Today’s readings seem to warn against the tendency to think and act as though the movements of the Holy Spirit could be institutionally controlled – the tendency to suppose that the initiative is ours rather than God’s. The passages from the Acts of the Apostles and from St. John’s Gospel seem to tell the same story in different ways, but both emphasize that the initiative is divine and that it comes to us from the crucified and now risen Jesus. The story in the Acts of the Apostles contains many allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures. The Spirit’s coming is placed within the festival of the Sinai covenant which was celebrated fifty days after Passover. As on Sinai, the place shakes under the participants’ feet and the presence of God is made known under the form of fire. As on Sinai, a new people is formed, the people of God, made up of the reluctant and the fearful, wonderfully transformed by the Spirit’s power. In the Upper Room, as on the mountain, a community of people to witness to the resurrection of Jesus is formed.

However, the seed in the Acts of the Apostles not only parallels that earlier gathering of God’s people; it also offers a contrast to the still earlier story of the scattering of God’s people at the Tower of Babel. In that sad tale, the people built and climbed in order to usurp God’s place; they captured the control tower, so to speak, or so they thought. Then everything fell apart. They were no longer able to understand one another. When the people gather to listen to Saint Peter, we are told that they all heard him in their own language.

When St. John tells the story, it is simpler. The risen Jesus comes in person, assuring his disciples that he is indeed the crucified; and breathing his own Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit, into them, he offers them the gifts of peace and joy in the power to forgive sins. This scene suggests a reference to the first creation when God breathes the divine breath into the human person who thereby becomes a living being. In the Upper Room the breath of God blows again and again for freedom. God has used the wind to dry up the great flood, to secure the escape of the Jews from Egypt, in the vocation of all the prophets, and in Mary’s conception of Jesus. Jesus breathes the Spirit into the apostles, recreating them in his own image and likeness. The sin of arrogance at the Tower of Babel is forgiven by the Holy Spirit.

As so often happens, St. Paul makes it specific and explicit and practical. The gifts of the Spirit to the members of the community are meant to be used for the building up of the whole body, for its unity in complementarity. These gifts are not privileges for the benefit of the recipient. Our task is to discern the gifts of the Spirit in all their variety. Each of us, with our own gifts and talents, also have our own vocation. According to St. Paul, it is in our plurality, our variety, that we become one body in Christ. To deny the talents of any is to diminish the body of Christ.

St. Paul gives us the most concrete indication of what it means to be reborn in the Spirit when he insists that the barriers between Jews and Greeks, between slaves and free persons, between male and female, and all prejudicial and oppressive distinctions cease for those who truly live in the Spirit. The same Spirit has been poured out for all of us, and we all experience the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit.